Work packages

WP1 Coordination, management & synthesis

This work package is concerned with the overall financial, administrative and operational management of the project. The WP will also coordinate the synthesis of the results from WP’s 2-6 into a single implementation Plan for the EGDI. Specific objectives are:

  • • Daily management of the project (monitoring of progress; communication between partners and with the EC; financial management; reporting; decision making; conflict management)
  • • The organization of meetings (Executive Board meetings, Full Consortium meetings, External Advisory Board meetings)
  • • Synthesis of project results

DELIVERABLE: D 1.1 EGDI-Scope Minutes of Meetings

DELIVERABLE: D 1.2 Internal Progress reports EGDI-Scope

DELIVERABLE: D 1.3 Implementation Plan for the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI)

Contact Person: Rob van der Krogt (rob.vanderkrogt@tno.nl)

WP2 Stakeholder consultation

This work package works on the  identification of Stakeholders. Initially, all potential stakeholders will be identified. Special emphasis will be put on pan-European institutions and projects like EEA, JRC, EPOS and various DG’s, but the gross list of stakeholders should also include national and local governmental organisations and private companies working with environmental protection, groundwater mapping and -monitoring, soil management, natural disasters, landscape and natural heritage, mining, energy resources, civil engineering, education and research.
For more information ….

Potential stakeholders will be contacted on an individual basis in order to get:

  • • An indication of their interest in the project
  • • An agreement of their level of involvement
  • • A dedicated contact person

Based on this analysis, a stakeholder panel will be assembled. This panel will be represented by c. 5 organisations and should throughout the project be consulted regularly in order to ensure that the project is on the right track.

Besides the members of the stakeholder panel, other interested organisations will be involved based on their indicated level of engagement. In total three groups of stakeholder will be identified:

  • • Stakeholder Panel: The core group of stakeholders
  • • List A: Organisations that should be invited to workshops and considered for interviews
  • • List B: A larger group of organisations who should be approached through questionnaires and who should be targeted for dissemination of project results by WP6..

A stakeholder Consultation will be set up. Members of the stakeholder’s panel and List A will be invited to a workshop early in the project (Month 6) in order to discuss the needs for data and services as well as exchanging ideas and requirements regarding the final infrastructure solution.

The workshop will be followed up by a questionnaire giving all involved stakeholders the opportunity to specify their individual requirements. Furthermore, certain selected organisations will be interviewed in order to get more detailed information on how a pan-European geological infrastructure will be able to meet their concrete needs. Input from all stakeholders will be compiled into prioritised lists of datasets and services to be included in the infrastructure.

A functional requirement specification as well as 3-5 very specific use cases will be selected and described. Focus will be on the relevance and feasibility of these use cases in order to be able to provide services through the infrastructure which are of use to large groups of geoscientific users.

A second stakeholder workshop will be organised in month 16, where stakeholders can provide feedback on preliminary results of the project.

Document: User needs datasets services

Document: User requirements and use cases

DELIVERABLE: D2.1 Stakeholders and Plan for Stakeholder Consultation

DELIVERABLE: D2.2 User Needs for Datasets and Services

DELIVERABLE: D2.3 Functional User Requirements and Use Cases

DELIVERABLE: D2.4 Final report of user needs and Functional requirements

Contact Person: Mikael Pedersen (mp@geus.dk)

WP3 Prioritisation of datasets

This work package sets out to prioritise the data-sets that will be delivered in the short-, medium and long-term, and the methodologies by which derived datasets will be produced. The broad objectives are to deliver complete geographical coverage and higher resolution baseline geological spatial data in the short term with baseline geophysical and geochemical data where available, to publish pan-European derived data-sets in the medium-term, and to progress towards delivery of 3D model data in the longer term. For more information ….

The WP will assess the priority needs and evaluate which important datasets and expertise are currently available, at the national level, which can be used as the backbone of the EGDI. In order to achieve these goals the WP3 will draft a long term prioritisation action plan and will be carried out through the following tasks:

Task 3.1: Review of previous and ongoing projects. Inventory of previous and ongoing projects (e.g. OneGeology, EuroGeoSource, PanGeo, eWater, eEarth, GeoMind, GeoSeas, eModNet, etc.)
· Inventory will include detailed analysis of the data available (type, format), how it was created, portals
currently in use to access the data, the necessary development needed in order to make the data interoperable and suitable for EGDI (with WP4). Data Integration will build on the experience acquired mainly during the development of the OneGeology-Europe Project. It will also build on the experience acquired within the INSPIRE Directive Drafting Teams.

Task 3.2: Review of the data available within NGSO. This Task will carry out a detailed analysis of the data currently available within NGSO. An Inventory of datasets and details of the conditions of use of those datasets will be
produced.
· This task will also complete a review of relevant data held by national organisations other than NGSO. It will document the accessibility criteria/ conditions and availability of use (with
WP5).
· This task will include a survey of available geoscientific national and regional data in the proposed pan-European derived data-set areas (for example: raw materials, groundwater,
hazardous areas, geophysical data, geochemical data, etc).

Task 3: Implementation and prioritisation plan for rolling out datasets on the EGDI . Stakeholder needs will be researched and analysed in conjunction with WP2. This task will analyse and identify perhaps one or two derived data-sets that are considered high priority in terms of user need, funding requirements, technical capacity requirements, etc. When suitable high priority candidates have been decided work can begin on implementing a methodology for their development. The list of derived data-sets that could be developed includes the following:

  • • Flooding hazard potential (River, Groundwater, Coastal)
  • • Radon hazard potential
o Tsunami hazard potential
  • • Ground stability hazard potential (landslides, swell-shrink clays, buried karst, etc.)
  • • Mining hazard potential
  • • Harmful elements in soils
  • • Heat flow
  • • Active fault distribution, seismicity
  • • Minerals and energy resources maps (e.g. coal, already in development in an existing EC project)

Propose Methodologies by which derived datasets will be produced. The methodologies for the production of pan-European derived data-sets will take into account the variability of skills and resources available to EGS members (and NGSO) and will allow flexibility, permitting members to contribute on differing levels according to their abilities. These methodologies wouldn’t just be making access to the data from the current and previous projects mentioned above, but would also be building on-the-fly derived datasets from the maintained and updated source components.

Task 4: technical requirements for serving 3D geological models. Explore the possibilities, data and technical requirements, and the developments required to provide 3D geological models

Document: Review of previous and ongoing projects

Document: Inventory of relevant datasets

DELIVERABLE: D 3.1 Review of previous and ongoing projects

DELIVERABLE: D 3.2 Review of relevant datasets available within Europe

DELIVERABLE: D 3.3 Implementation and prioritisation plan for rolling out datasets on the EGDI

DELIVERABLE: D 3.4 Technical requirements for serving 3D geological models

Contact Person: Kathryn Lee (kbo@bgs.ac.uk)

WP4 Technical design

This work package sets out the requirements for technical design, deployment and maintenance of the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EDGI), in order to fulfil the user requirements identified in WP2.
The infrastructure will be based on the principles of interoperability defined by the INSPIRE framework and other large initiatives dealing with geospatial information, and it will build on the experience of the design, implementation and operations of the different portals and other geological information systems developed within previous projects. For more information…

The evaluation of existing interoperable infrastructures will review the status and best practices of the technical architecture and design of large initiatives dealing with geospatial information (INSPIRE, GEOSS, EuroGEOSS, GMES,US-GIN, EPOS). It will also evaluate experiences about design, implementation and operation gained through previous EU funded projects including OneGeology-Europe, EuroGeoSource, eWater, EModnet, GeoMind and others. Finally, this task will explore possible synergies with other activities in the e-infrastructures domain.

Technical Specifications, taking into account the user requirements derived from WP2, will design an interoperable system supporting a distributed implementation to facilitate the deployment and the operational performance of
the system. A special attention will be given to those requirements that are not addressed by “standard” implementations developed for demonstration purposes, such as the management of 3D models, or performance and reliability issues that are crucial for professional use. This includes the possibilities of using cloud architectures, keeping in mind possible legal concerns of some surveys

The technical specifications of the EGDI architecture will address:

  • • Identification of existing standards for data models developed through international or European initiatives (INSPIRE core and extensions), and their appropriateness for EGDI. This will include the standards for metadata and for semantic interoperability (taking into account multilingualism).
  • • Specification of required services, including: access control and security, data publishing, discovery, conformity testing, view (including on 3D models), data access, registry management and access, monitoring of the infrastructure services.
  • • Evaluation of methodologies to provide search and access to consolidated European datasets combining distributed datasets served by the national contributors.
  • • Design of a multilingual EGDI portal giving access to all datasets, including 3D data and models (building on existing portals)

Moreover the evaluation of NGSO capacities will estimate the capacity of the national geological surveys to implement the proposed specifications in order to define appropriate technical solutions and develop sharing of expertise within the community. It will also evaluate the maintenance of the infrastructure that will have to take into account the evolution of technical solutions as well as evolution of data models.

DELIVERABLE: D 4.1 Report on evaluation of existing interoperable infrastructures

DELIVERABLE: D 4.2 Report on data models, vocabularies, services, and portal specifications for the EGDI

DELIVERABLE: D 4.3 Infrastructure Needs

DELIVERABLE: D 4.4 Report on recommendations for implementation of the EGDI

Contact Person: Grellet Sylvain (S.Grellet@brgm.fr)

WP5 Legal and organisational aspects

The objective of WP5 is to gain an overview of the legal and organisational barriers for the development of the EGDI and to determine the possible manners to overcome these barriers. It will analyse and compare existing data policies in order to determine their value for the EGDI. This includes issues such as licensing of data and services, but also trust, authentication and governance structures. Based on this, guidelines will be developed for a legal and organisational framework for the open availability of geological data in the EGDI.
First, the analysis of trust and authentication issues will address the legal requirements and conditions in order to ensure trust within the infrastructure and look at the roles and profiles that may need to be developed for this. This relates to, among other aspects, identity management, authentication, access management, and digital credentials.

Second, the national rules and regulations will be analysed on the availability of the data identified as priority datasets within WP3. WP5 will compare these rules and regulations and determine possible remaining barriers in national legislation. Next, it will make an inventory of existing licensing policies that may be used as input for the legal and organisational framework for the EGDI.

Third, possible governance models will be analysed and compared for data infrastructures (in particular the ERIC model) and their strengths and weaknesses for the governance of the EGDI will be assessed. Recommendations will be made to EuroGeoSurveys for implementing a governance model.

Based on these three activities, will be created created for the development and maintenance of the EGDI and for removing the remaining legal and organisational barriers. These guidelines will address the availability of data under open licensing policies, trust and authentication, and governance of the infrastructure.

DELIVERABLE: D 5.1 Report on trust and authentication

DELIVERABLE: D 5.2 Report on regulation and policies

DELIVERABLE: D 5.3 Report on Governance Structure

DELIVERABLE: D 5.4 Guidelines on the Legal and Organizational Framework

Contact Person: Marie-Christine Janssens (M-Ch.Janssens@law.kuleuven.be)

WP6 Communication & dissemination

The main objectives of the WP6 are:

  • • To implement the effective internal communication within the consortium, which includes both the full participants in this proposal and the other member organisations of EuroGeoSurveys
  • • To widely disseminate information on and progress of EGDI-Scope in a comprehensive, systematic, objective and professional manner to all relevant stakeholders, with a particular focus on EU bodies and the broad geoscientific community. For more information…

The implementation of the internal communication is based in ensuring a proper communication flow during the project in collaboration with WP1. This includes the develop a web-based management tool (based on existing, open-source solutions). This will be a secured domain within the project website where documents of general use for the consortium (contract documents, deliverables, templates, meeting agenda’s and minutes, progress reports etc.) can be stored, and distributed. The tool will also facilitate management tasks fast and easy reporting of project work, resources and expenditure. A “forum” section will be included, where participants can discuss all project-related matters. All participants will be provided with a manual on how to operate the tools’ functionalities.

The WP6 will also develop templates for e.g. presentations, reports, deliverables, and posters
, organise project meetings and keep EGS members informed of project progress (through the project website, a project newsletter, and through presentations at EGS National Delegate and General Meetings).

The main goal of external communication and dissemination is to inform, through a range of communication channels, all relevant stakeholders on the project and it’s progress. (Ex: Dissemination Database with contact details of stakeholders, public website, logo, reports, presentations, brochures, flyer, newsletter, conferences and other events at national and international level
, specific workshops for relevant stakeholders) .

External communication will target relevant EU bodies and officers; the geoscience community in a broad sense (Academic organisations, trade and professional associations and bodies operating in geoscientific fields, international GSO’s, Industry); as well as the general public.
The project will actively participate in joint activities and meetings related to the e-Infrastructures and other related areas including the participation and contribution to relevant working groups established under the above initiative. The objective of the concertation activity is to optimise synergies between projects and the collective impact and value of the programme.

The project will (also) provide input for relevant European Commission initiated dissemination activities (e.g. press releases, news bulletins, brochures, success stories, posters, web-based publications, multimedia material etc). In this context the project’s dissemination messages will also reflect its broader societal and economic impact.

The project’s dissemination material in relation to the above goal will be regularly updated to provide the latest version of its status and achievements.

Document: Communication and Dissemination Strategy EGDI-Scope

Document: Banner EGDI-Scope 2012

Document: Brochure EGDI-Scope 2013

Document: Brochure EGDI-Scope 2014

Document: Newsletter 08 Oct 2012

Document: Newsletter 09 Jan 2013

Document: Newsletter April 2013

Document: Newsletter July 2013

Document: Newsletter October 2013

Document: Newsletter January 2014

Document: Newsletter April 2014

Document: Newsletter July 2014

Document: Statement EGS at GEO-X

Document: Press Release EGDI-Scope Final Event

DELIVERABLE: D 6.5 Report on final Symposium

Contact Person: Claudia Delfini (claudia.delfini@eurogeosurveys.org)

..